Hey blog readers(assuming there are still some of you out there)! Long time no see, huh? I had a meal at Cracker Barrel today, and I felt the need reconnect. And no, that is not a non-sequitur.
I may be the only person in the state of Kentucky, nay, in
the whole southern tier of the US, who does not like Cracker Barrel. A bold
statement, but judging by the mass of humanity in any given franchise on any
given day, I don’t think it’s hyperbole. In fact, I probably just lost half my
audience to daydreams of grits, beans n greens, chicken-fried chicken, and a
heaping portion of hash brown casserole.
For me, that’s no daydream. It’s a nightmare. The mere
thought makes me want to eat a roll of tums and curl up on the couch in a what-have-I-done
food coma.
You’re thinking that’s nice, weird, whatever, but so what?
This is a free country. You are an adult with free will. No one is forcing you
into that bastion of down-home country goodness.
(Cue whiny voice.)
Except people are forcing
me, dammit! They totally are. Not in a twist-my-arm-behind-my-back,
threaten-my-loved-ones kind of way (because, well, they are my loved ones), but
in an exasperated, why-does-everyone-have-to-suffer-because-you-are-too-snobby-for-down-home-country-goodness
kind of way.
I am not too snobby for down-home country goodness. I was
raised on down-home country goodness. And Cracker Barrel is NOT down-home country
goodness! Cracker Barrel is the commercialization of someone’s idea of what
down-home country goodness should be. And holy cow has America bought into it!
My good friend, Linda, will not allow us to begin a girls’
weekend without breakfast at Cracker Barrel. She was raised in Connecticut by
her British mother. And ironically, we leave Cracker Barrel and go straight to
Starbucks so she can get an iced mocha. Yep, a bonafide, down-home girl, that Linda.
Even worse is my husband, Bruce. He loves Cracker Barrel
with the devotion of a true zealot. Grits, greens, chicken n dumplins,
cornbread, and OMG…Uncle Herschel’s breakfast…don’t even get him started. Sounds
like a good ole boy, doesn’t he? Bruce was born on Staten Island and
raised in a large city north of the Ohio River.
So maybe Cracker Barrel is the place where wannabe down-home
country folks go to get the food they never had as a child? That would be a
nice theory if real, down-home country folks didn’t like it so much, but they
do like it. They really, really do.
WHY DO YOU PEOPLE LIKE IT SO MUCH?!?!
I can picture my friends and neighbors out there shaking
their heads, thinking, “Why do you hate it so much, Kathy? Geez, girlfriend,
chill out.”
Okay…maybe I do need to chill out, but let me share. My
husband got out of bed this morning and announced his intention to eat at
Cracker Barrel. Normally, I would talk him out of it, and I’m pretty good at
getting my way on this. He usually acquiesces because he doesn’t want to sit
through a meal with a sullen, unhappy wife. I’m not proud of my attitude, but
it is what it is. This morning, I made a half-hearted attempt. Something about
how I could cook breakfast, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t really want to cook. Our
youngest son was being a pain in the butt, and adding to his bad attitude didn’t
seem reasonable, so I said, “Sure. Sounds good.”
Okay…I didn’t say that, but I did say something not sullen
and unhappy, and I put the best possible foot forward given that Bruce was
pissed at young son and I was smoothing the waters by consenting to eat at Cracker
Barrel.
We drove past the long porch with its rustic, hundred-dollar
rocking chairs and saw that the parking lot was completely full. We ended up in
the back next to the dumpsters, and in the long hike to the door, we made small
talk about the friend we had passed and mistaken for someone else because they
were both so jowly. Really, I was mentally girding my loins.
Cracker Barrel on a random Tuesday night in April is not my
favorite place, but on a Sunday morning two days before Christmas, it is the 4th
level of hell. People were packed wall to wall in the “Old Country Store.”
Bruce weaved his way through the labyrinth of humanity and
kitsch and put our name on the list. Ten to fifteen minutes they said. And in
spite of the crush, they were true to their word. I am thankful for this
because I only endured fifteen minutes wedged against a display containing
Mickey Mouse Pez dispensers, giant Hershey’s kisses, toddler-sized fedoras
(wtf??), and holiday sweatshirts containing snowy landscapes and the implicit
message, “I stopped staying up past nine o’clock ten years ago.”
We saw people we knew. I could not talk to them because I
was trapped between the aforementioned display and people blocking every
possible path to my friends. Bruce moved a box on top of the display, so I
could at least smile and wave. The only open path led into the dining room, Shangri-La
if you judged by the sheer number of people trying to get in. If there had been
a kitchen fire, I’d be dead right now.
When our name was called, we made our way into Shangri-La,
squeezing sideways to get past the servers in the narrow aisles between tables.
I can only assume the fire marshal has seen the number and configuration of
tables and deemed the place safe, but damn! Seriously…just damn…
I shouted my drink order to our server over the din of
plates clanking, children screaming, and voices raised in raucous conversation
and opened my menu. Oh, the menu! A culinary ode to all that is breaded, fried,
buttered, and sugared! They actually have an entrée called chicken-fried
chicken. My grandmother was born, raised, and lived her whole life in the
country on a farm, and she made the best chicken that was ever breaded and cooked
up in boiling Crisco (the kind that came solid in a large can). She spared neither
the breading nor the grease, and even then we just called it fried chicken.
Chicken-fried chicken??? What is that?
I’ll never know. I ordered a grilled chicken salad with the
extra-creamy buttermilk dressing on the side. I’m not a health food freak, but
I refuse to consume 10,000 calories in an insanely heavy “down-home” meal when
I have the option of consuming 10,000 calories in rich and wonderful Christmas treats.
I don’t remember what Bruce ordered, but it made him happy,
and I was glad. The conversation turned from the aggravating 18 year-old to
more pleasant subjects. A couple of friends stopped by the table to say hello
and Merry Christmas. And on the way out, when a Stetson-wearing fellow with
long gray hair and matching beard (think Gandalf meets Waylon Jennings) grabbed
a pecan pie off the counter display, I realized I had a story for my poor,
neglected blog. And that made me happy.
I left The Old Country Store with a smile. (Knowing I was off
the Cracker Barrel hook for a while didn’t hurt either.)
